ONT Re: Inquiry Driven Systems
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where was i? 'what is the relation between inquiry and ontology, anyway?'
seems to be a recurring question, so let me see if i can sum it up quick:
| all of our human concepts are conceived in uncertainty,
| and 'inquiry' is just a name for the way out of doubts.
so it's back to what kant sang, and peirce reverbed,
about the 'good' of a concept being its utility for
helping us 'reduce a manifold to a unity' (ramtau).
that is, 'manifold' is another name -- it's names
are legion -- for a 'state of uncertainty' (sou).
what's all that mean in dynamic and in symbolic terms?
dynamic. good question. we are asked to think of a sou
as a state of a dynamical system, and thus to consider
the moment of doubt or the weight of uncertainty of
our representative inquiring agent as one of the
state variables that determines its dynamics.
it's a bit hard to figure how to start here.
symbolic. here we have more good ideas of how to start,
indeed, a cornucopious embarrassment of riches of them.
so we have to begin by classifying all of the various
ways that a sou may be tokened within a formal realm.
a sou may not be a coin of the realm where we live,
so we have to coin a new token for it, or it may
be a sign of uncertain denomination, requiring
a closer examination to assize its value, or
it may be that we have only some indirect
account or (un)certificate of its cents.
and so on. i'm saussure that i've not
exhausted the peirce on this account.
fits & starts,
starts & fits,
jon awbrey
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